Phil Ingle

Back up to Ceillac with Seb. It was even colder than yesterday. From the top lift you can traverse across to start skinning, but it was so cold that we skied a bit further down so that we could put our skins on in a patch of sunlight.

The skin goes up some rolling drumlins and we stayed a bit spread out because of any avalanche danger. Then you crest a little collette and the couloir is there in front of you. It is quite an aesthetic line.

The snow was deep and the boot pack was a bit like swimming at times. The top of the couloir was topped by a 3m high vertical cornice and just below it was a short narrow section that was only about a meter wide so we stopped about 10m below the top of the couloir and dug out a ledge to get set up on.

The descent was fantastic, great powder snow all the way down. There is a small narrows in the middle that is just over 2m wide that needs to be negotiated, but the rest was just big powder turns. The sluff was quite significant, and at 50 degrees it goes much faster than you can, so some care had to be taken to to be caught out by it.